I'm so glad I'm not the only one who feels this way. I just had the opportunity to see it on the big screen for the first time, and I was looking forward to seeing something that had Brando, Taylor, AND Julie Harris to boot. Three amazing talents with Robert Forster and Brian Keith thrown in, and then the great John Huston directing. But the whole thing was utter garbage. As one person said - the accents were terrible, the campy overacting by Liz was just great if you're a Liz fan like me, but it doesn't make the movie 'good' in any way. Brando was incomprehensible on so many levels. Yes, he had one or two good acting scenes, and probably did the best acting job overall, but it was not one of his better performances on the whole. Julie Harris was good but it was a throw away character that didn't require a great range, and Brian Keith just can't act his way out of a paper bag. Then the strange scenes with Forster. I mean c'mon, how many times are you going to show him over and over again standing outside the house? Yeah, he's a stalker and a voyeur, we get it. And Brando's homosexuality was not that obvious in the first half of the movie. Yet it's downright blatant in the second half. Not very subtle really, it should've been more gradual. In the beginning you just get the sense that he's wound too tight. And the nipple cutting, Harris' wacky houseboy who's just plain bizzare, the nude scenes with Forster and the horse - they all just made no real sense and were just there for shock value. For 1967 this was all very 'daring', as was the subject of Brando being a closeted homo. Nowadays it's like, yeah, so? The big general is gay, we get it... And another stupid thing is, why in the hell is Taylor married to him in the first place? We get none of that backstory and are left to wonder how they got together in the first place. The beautiful daughter of a big general and she's married to this guy who mumbles and has a stick up his ass, who has no sexual interest in her. It doesn't really make sense. And the ending was kind of inevitable. It wasn't a shocking ending at all which one would expect from a movie like this - some kind of interesting plot turn, but instead it was an obvious ending.
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Errington_92
8 years ago
Taylor and Brando had no chemistry onscreen
One could argue that their lack of chemistry is relevant for the narrative, since their characters despise each other. As to those who feel nothing happens,
Reflections in a Golden Eye is a story where it is what happens underneath the surface that counts.
I'd rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not.
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